There was another silence, while the selectmen looked at one another and then at Rowena whose face was all alight. Her eyes were lifted as if she saw something beside the ceiling of the ugly room, and she did. She saw the fragrant orchard and the white-clothed children, and heard the joyous singing.
At last one man brought his fist down on the table.
"The youngster is right," he said. "Let the cows go to grass for a while and let us talk about the river. Come here, Rowena." He pulled another chair up to the table. "Come here and join the committee. Now tell us your ideas of how we had better go to work."
Rowena looked very happy and climbed up at once into the chair.
"People have to be punished when they do wrong," she said. "First let everybody know that the Polawee is going to be made so clean that if the Princess came to see herself in it the picture in the water would look as lovely as her own face. Then put up signs that anybody who threw things into the river would have to pay money to you. No tin cans, no ashes, no pigs, no sticks—nothing must go into the Polawee,—then, don't you see," Rowena looked around the table brightly, "don't you see it will wash itself clean, and people will love to go and sit beside it?"
"It is a fact," said one of the selectmen. "The river hasn't been much more than a dump for years. We'll see what can be done about it."
Rowena left the Town Hall after some more talk, and a very happy little girl she was when she ran home and told her aunt what she had done.
Her aunt lifted up her eyes and hands and laughed. "What are we coming to," she said, "when the children have to take a hand! Well, you did wonders, Rowena, to stir up those lazy bones."
The next day in the village paper an article appeared which astonished Rowena's aunt and all the village. One of the selectmen was the editor of the village paper, and fortunately for Rowena it was the one who had looked the most kindly at her and had invited her to sit up at the table. This is what the paper said:
THE PRINCESS POLAWEE IS IN OUR MIDST.
No one who knows the story of the good Indian Princess will be very much surprised to learn that she has not been able to rest in the happy hunting grounds on account of the sad condition of her beloved river.
From its high estate of comforter to the sorrowing, the Polawee has become the poor, ugly dumping ground of all the lazy folk in our village. The Princess, unable to bear any longer the burden put upon her dear stream, has spoken through the lips of one of our own children and pleaded for a restoration of its beauty and charm.
The village fathers, therefore, have decided to comply with the wishes of the Indian Maid and see that the change is brought about. Henceforth the Polawee is to be the object of our loving care until it comes into its own.
Posters will soon appear in convenient places near the river bank, explaining that any and all persons who throw into the water anything more ugly than freshly gathered flowers, will be punished by a fine, the money thus received to go toward further beautifying the Polawee; but we hope that our citizens will so sympathize with the good Princess, and so realize what an ornament the river should be to the village, that we shall receive no money from that source.
(Signed) Your Village Council.